The Wizard of Oz and I

(This will make much more sense after part one, here.)

Outside Il Mago's shop, in Orvieto

An eruption of sound, light, and motion, as the world below my eyes kicked into life, overlapping music box jangles and blinking lights. I’d come to see the Wizard of Oz, tucked away in a side street of hilltop Orvieto, Italy, and now that same gruff wizard was standing beside me, lights reflected in his glasses and smile.

“This carousel is in the Jardin du Luxembourg, in Paris. The oldest in the city, from 1879.” Looking at his tiny faithful reproduction, I could imagine the generations of children that have sat and shrieked on the original Parisian horses.

“Here is a ride from Coney Island, in your country.” The little roller coaster car rose to the top and slid down the track, tiny wooden figures throwing their arms up in an unaging joyous thrill. His artisan finger worked down the row. “This is the ice skating rink from Toronto. The ferris wheel of London. The tea cups of Disney.” We moved among the world’s remembrances, sharing each one whether we’d ever seen it or not. Each tiny world, handmade by this artisan.

“When I was a boy, I knew what I wanted to be.” My assumption was beginning when he filled in the answer. “A cowboy!” He watched my grins over his bifocals for a moment before continuing. “I wanted to so much, that I did it, I ran away! I left my home and started towards Texas." Let that moment linger. "My mother caught me ten seconds down the road, gave me two big slaps, and brought me home. So instead of running away to be a Texas cowboy, I began to make things."

Orvieto is the sort of town where doing
things the old way makes sense.

Together we looked out over the delicate wooden toyscape of figures and memories. On the corner of his desk, beside the antique cash register, I noticed a familiar book. Seeing my glance, he picked it up. “Yes, Rick Steves. I am in his book. He came here and liked my work. Other companies want me in their books too, but they want money. It’s a commercial. Advertising. I am in Rick’s book because he liked what I do, so he put me in. That’s it. But I haven’t seen him in years.”

I told him Rick was my boss, that I was a guide, and that I’d learned of the toy shop in the current edition of the book. There was a hint of melancholy in the Wizard’s voice when he repeated “I haven’t seen him in years.” I assured him that even if Rick doesn’t have time, someone from the company comes around at least once a year to make sure we still believe in our recommendations, so we still appreciate his work. But there was something else.

Rick Steves and the Mago di Oz have something in common. Both are among the rare few who have created exactly the career they wanted. My eyes returned to one of the Wizard’s handpainted signs. Make your reality like your dreams, and your dreams into your reality. These two men have done that, and I can only imagine they recognized something in each other.

Nothing against minions, but compared
to the 12th century Moor's Tower,
they seem a tad chintsy

I was feeling a peaceful sense of satisfaction and happiness in the presence of this gentle man when the door opened to admit a woman and her son, from one of the bigger bus tours that feed people through Europe’s Express Lane. Her hand held the cheap plastic Pixar balloon he’d wanted for a moment, and neither greeted Il Mago as they entered his space. I watched him monitor them with the same tolerant caution he’d initially shown me, and was thinking how nerve wracking it must be to have unknown entities always lumbering among your treasures, cheap balloons bonking into handmade zeppelins, when the woman took out her phone and lifted its little factory eye.

“No photo!” The Wizard’s snarl was instantaneous and sharp. Blunt force reminder at an Italian volume. “No photo!”

How does one bring the fragile lightness of childhood into the tenacious heaviness of adulthood? Not easily, I thought, as I watched mother and son endure that awkward pause to save face before fleeing the shop. But it’s only appropriate for a wizard to be a little scary. Booming voices and flaring flames of castigation, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, with his gentle love of a gentler life.

No, the Wizard of Oz doesn’t let you take photos. But when a reminder of the texture of childhood is on offer, photos are not what you want anyway.

The Wizard did allow me one photo.
(Photo credit: some woman who did not take out her phone.)

The Wizard of Oz is Italian

The Wizard of Oz doesn’t let you take pictures. Looking around his close-shouldered toyscape of fragile wooden forms and clustered vintage artefacts, that was understandable. Besides, I already had enough photos from outside, Orvieto, back in normal Italy.

The walls of Orvieto

Out there, looking through a lens brings the whole world more into focus, reminding me to notice the textures of the quotidian, and aiding a more deliberate examination of our scrambling world. But in Il Mago’s workshop I didn’t need that precision, in his world I was better served by the flitting fancy of a childlike eye, overthrowing the diligence of inspection for the relaxation of entertainment.

Around, above, and behind me, colors clustered and shapes lurked in delicate extravagance. Art nouveau iconography lounged in evening wear behind nostalgic paraphernalia in pajamas, stained glass butterflies hovered above Betty Boop’s Route 66 diner, and a parade of metal giraffes and jugglers was on their eternal way to childhood’s circus. Hot air balloons drifted up among Spitfires and B-12 bombers held en route to battles uncountable. Cowboys and Indians with stagecoaches to match, while the flappers and mobsters surrounded stylish cars in a sudden sense of speakeasy jazz.

No photos in Oz, but Ippolito Scalza's
Pietá is too beautiful not to share.

Such was the cacophonic harmony of an unexpected piece of this world, created by that man, who watched me from under alert eyebrows like foxholes. There was something of a residual frown on his face, until he saw the smile on mine. Then he approached, real casual like. Was there a wisp of the masked diffidence one might find in an unapologetic adult who was once a teased child? I couldn’t be sure.

“Let me know if you have any questions.” He offered, smooth but stern as old wood.

“Thank you,” I answered, and for a moment he watched while I gazed. “But truth be told, I’m not even sure what questions to ask.”

Maybe not all passion is easily shared, but the Mago’s is. His artisanal fingers pointed here and there as he explained that he finds some of the pieces by careful search through trusted sources, but that he makes most of them himself. That alone was impressive, in our modern age of Made in China stamps and supply chains redolent with karmic consequences that may last even longer than the plastic we buy and throw away.

Tragedy! Crisis! Death! Don't read
such things, cara Nonna.

My brain wanted to walk down those familiar penal paths of today’s dire adulthood, but from his basics beginning, “They come from me”, he quickly transcended to a more dreamlike place, where his various mottos, handpainted on slats of wood, were the rules of the game: “Make your reality like your dreams, and your dreams into your reality.”

Maybe it sounds better in Italian, but in that place, it made perfect sense to me. I was nodding to the notion, but that didn’t seem to be the reaction he was looking for. “Put your dreams into your reality,” he encouraged me, and swept his hand at the array of silent creations. I had weeks of tour-work still to go, and putting one of his pieces of art into a backpack would be empirical blasphemy, but it didn’t seem like a sales pitch.

“Reach out and touch your dreams!” He was enthusiastic, expectant, and I felt like I was failing a test. “Reach out! Touch the dreams!” Reach out and touch? Was there a button hidden among the delicate arms and fragile beams? Feeling lame, my finger reached out, unsure whether to go left or right, so plodded straight ahead until it landed, just for a moment, right on the...

(Oops, late for work. See you tomorrow.)